


in pari causa turpitudinis cessat repetitio

by descoladin



Category: Legally Blonde - Hach/O'Keefe/Benjamin
Genre: Discussion of Abortion, Dubious Consent, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-02
Updated: 2013-09-02
Packaged: 2017-12-25 10:35:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/952064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/descoladin/pseuds/descoladin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elle is perfectly aware what Callahan thinks of her marriage. Given that she has quite possibly fucked Callahan in every five-star hotel in Boston, and let's not even get into how many times in his office, he is probably right. </p><p>(Sequel to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/57863">Juris-Imprudence</a> by x_los.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Juris-Imprudence](https://archiveofourown.org/works/57863) by [x_los](https://archiveofourown.org/users/x_los/pseuds/x_los). 



> ...I DON'T EVEN KNOW.
> 
> Thanks to x_los for being so gracious about my writing a weird messed-up sequel :)

**Elle:**

Elle is perfectly aware what Callahan thinks of her marriage. Given that she has quite possibly fucked Callahan in every five-star hotel in Boston, and let's not even get into how many times in his office, he is probably right.

Elle is also perfectly aware, from the snide offhand comments Callahan sometimes lets drop, that Callahan thinks it's Emmett that's the problem with their marriage. He refers to Emmett as "Shabby Sheik," with the distinct implication that Emmett is jealous of her. But Callahan is wrong about Emmett. Mostly.

Emmett's got a chip on his shoulder, sure, and probably always will, but it's not personal and has never turned into jealousy of those better off than he is. He needs to prove himself to the world, too much, so much that it's a problem, but he doesn't really care what the world itself does. (Possibly he cares too little, she thinks, remembering the trouble she had getting him to wear a proper tailored suit.) Emmett loves Bruiser (almost too much) and actually likes her friends, even if he sometimes refers to them as a sort of alien species. Sometimes Elle thinks he likes her friends more than he likes her. 

Because Callahan might be right that Emmett hates her. She's fairly sure she would, were she in his place. The affair aside, there's that last ugly argument they had before Callahan was even in the picture, the one where she took words he spoke to her in trust and turned them against him. Where she let her fears and insecurities get the better of her, instead of trying to figure out where he was coming from.

No, it's Elle who owns this affair, Elle who is letting her marriage disintegrate in the meantime, and although she obviously finds Callahan attractive enough to fuck him in odd hotels, sometimes she is angry at him for his easy assumptions about what is and isn't wrong with her marriage, and how he has come to fuck his once-protege's wife. But she's not going to talk to him about Emmett or her marriage. Ever. She may be betraying Emmett in all the other ways possible, but that particular betrayal is one she's not capable of.

Elle is fairly sure that Emmett knows she's having an affair. She's not very good at keeping secrets, and Emmett has always been good at figuring them out. And she's doing all the cliched affair things -- coming home late without excuses, disappearing at odd times. She is keeping one secret from him, though: Emmett doesn't know who it is. Elle thinks, if Emmett knew whom she was fucking, he would never forgive her.

One day, Callahan gives her an exquisite dress, and offers her partnership. The price, or one of the prices, is that he is demanding her at dinner, instead of going out with Emmett for their anniversary. She's pretty sure that the bastard knows perfectly well it's their anniversary, too.

She goes into the women's bathroom to call Emmett to let him know she won't be making it to dinner. She closes the door, then goes into the stall and closes that door too. She doesn't really think that Callahan is eavesdropping on her conversations, or that he even cares, or that they will say anything interesting, but she does it anyway.

Emmett, reasonably -- and she represses a wholly illogical shred of irritation at how he can be so reasonable when he knows his wife is fucking another man, and blowing off their anniversary to do so -- wants to know why. "Callahan just offered me partnership. The dinner's to seal the deal," she tells him.

There is a small silence, and Elle realizes that she's just given him a huge, gigantic clue that it's Callahan she's fucking. Yeah. Terrible at secrets. 

"I love you," she says. It's still true, after everything. It's still true even though she fucked Callahan on his desk not half an hour ago.

Emmett says, sounding unhappy and defeated, "I love you too," and she knows that this is true as well, because Emmett may not be perfect, but he has never lied to her, not once. She hangs up the phone before she can ask if he would be able to forgive her. She isn't sure whether she is more afraid that he will tell the truth, or that he will, finally, lie.

**Emmett:**

Emmett knows that Elle's having an affair. He even knows with whom. Elle is terrible at keeping a secret, and always has been, even when they were first dating and the secret was as innocuous as what she was giving him for his birthday. But honestly, it's almost like she wants him to know, what with Lila almost falling all over Emmett when he goes to find Elle in her office (she's not there, obviously), telling him how Callahan bullied Lila into telling him Ms. Woods was at her parents' vacation house. (Emmett, being her husband, is assumed to know this. He does not act on this information. What, after all, would be the use?) 

He also knows that Elle thinks it's all her fault. He can tell because of the more and more extravagant presents she starts buying him, nice suits and watches, and he's waiting bitterly for the day he comes home to a new convertible in the driveway, because that will be the day Elle announces she's leaving him. He wonders if Elle notices that he never actually wears those suits or watches.

Is she right? Well, yes, it is primarily and essentially her fault; it's not like someone held her down and made her fuck him. (Although, knowing Callahan, it's faintly and horribly possible, and he shudders and immediately represses that picture.)

But he also knows who else is to blame. Callahan. Yes, Elle had a choice, but he's worked with Callahan a long time, worked with his ex-wife for longer, and he's come to realize how good Callahan is at manipulation. It wasn't until he worked with Callahan's ex-wife and saw how Callahan had fucked with her mind that he realized the way Callahan had manipulated Emmett himself for years. Callahan played hard on the avuncular tough-but-fair father figure when he was with Emmett, knowing Emmett was fatherless, and oh, did Emmett fall for it. Anything Callahan wanted him to do, he did, starting with bringing him coffee and almost ending with bringing him Emmett's integrity and job prospects. If it hadn't been for the first time Elle and Callahan clashed, he'd probably still be eating scraps from Callahan's table, begging him for a crumb of approval in lieu of being named partner.

Emmett can imagine how Callahan is playing this one. Elle has always needed to be validated, especially by those with power. He knows, when he's thinking about it most cynically, that had he been a law student in a lower class than Elle, someone who couldn't hand her validation and approval, that she would never have fallen for him in the first place. He knows that Callahan has probably worked hard on the aspect of being the hard-nosed power broker who notices the aspiring spunky protege. He imagines, in the dead of night when he can't help but think about it, that Callahan is probably insulting her on one hand and handing out careless compliments on Elle's intelligence with the other, and Elle is probably eating it up.

But then again, sometimes, late at night when he is wakeful and alone in their bed, he can't help but remember that when it was his mind getting fucked over by Callahan, it was Elle who dragged him back from sacrificing his own integrity, and he supposes that he should have been dragging her back, instead of -- The affair and all that might have happened anyway, but he knows the specific conflict in their marriage that precipitated it: their fight about having a baby. Emmett wants children, badly, and Elle doesn't. She's too busy, can't afford to take maternity leave because she has too much to do, is worried that it will ruin her career and her marriage and her figure and her life. And -- well, who would have thought it, but it turns out that listening to his mom and her boyfriends fight, and being a divorce lawyer, have not exactly provided him with a good template for managing marriage conflict. Instead of listening to her, instead of trying to work out both their demons (as Elle hurled at him in one of their more awful fights, his need for children may be related to his need to prove he'll be a better dad than his father was), he argued and insulted and attempted to coerce and finally pushed her straight in the path of Callahan's waiting cock.

The night after their last blow-out fight, the one in which he accused her of being a rich bitch who cared more about her weight than her family, and she accused him of being a neurotic with a chip on his shoulder who wasn't fit to provide emotional support to a hamster, let alone a child, was the last night they made love. The day after that fight was the first day of that juicy trial on which she was co-counsel with Callahan. The month after that was when she started lining his closet with expensive suits.

*

The day of their anniversary, Emmett is just gathering up the reports spread across his desk to go home when Elle calls. "Emmett, I can't make it for dinner tonight." His stomach falls. They don't make love, they don't spend time together, they don't even talk about anything but the most banal of subjects, but at least Elle has the decency to adhere fairly strictly to standards of relationship propriety, like remembering birthdays and anniversaries. 

"What's going on?" he asks. It occurs to him that he has no idea if Callahan listens in to their conversations. He likes to think Elle won't let him, but then again, he would have preferred to think Elle wouldn't have had an affair at all, no matter how Callahan was fucking with her mind. It doesn't really matter, as these days they don't say anything substantial.

"Callahan just offered me partnership. The dinner's to seal the deal. Hey, I even get to pick the place."

"All right," he says. "That's pretty important. We can go out tomorrow night."

"Yes, of course. This won't happen again. I love you," she says, and then he knows that Callahan isn't listening in. "I'm sorry," she whispers. "Happy anniversary to us."

"I love you too," he says, and manages to add, "Congratulations," through only slightly clenched teeth, before he hangs up and bangs his head on his desk.

After the first shock of anger and pain -- _my wife is going to have dinner with her lover tonight instead of with me, on our anniversary -- my wife's lover is making her partner_ \-- he realizes that, in the elliptical style they communicate in nowadays because it hurts too much to actually talk, Elle is telling him something interesting. Callahan's starting to give. The balance of power has shifted. Elle is starting to become Callahan's equal. And with that, Callahan's not going to be able to maniupate Elle in that way any more, and quite possibly isn't going to be able to handle it himself. Only Callahan hasn't realized that yet. But Emmett has, because his wife has told him, for the first time in months, that she loves him. 

He buries his face in his hands. He will wait for her. He will try. He's only human, and the past months have made him feel like the stuffing's knocked out of him, and he might not, after all, be able to forgive her for what she's done. And maybe she won't come back after all. And maybe she won't forgive him, either. But he will try. And, he thinks, he can almost believe that she will be willing to try too, eventually.

He curls his lip slightly. He's had to admit that Elle was right. He's glad, in the end, that Elle won that argument, and that they aren't going to have a child. Because knowing what he knows now, and even if their marriage manages to limp back from this brink, he would never bring a child into this mess.


	2. Chapter 2

**Emmett:**

The day after their anniversary, Emmett and Elle go out to dinner at L'Espalier. They talk very little. She does not ask about his ulcer. On the other hand, he thinks, she might not actually know about it, as it was post-Callahan. He does not ask about her being made partner. He _specifically_ does not ask about her being made partner.

He picks at his food, not really eating much of it. He catches her staring at his mostly-full plate. He's always eaten about three times faster than she, and her forehead creases a little, but she lets it slide. He thinks, a little caustically, that they've both let a lot of subjects slide recently.

"What are you thinking?" Elle asks. 

"Are you coming home after dinner?" Emmett replies. "Or do you have work?" He can't keep a little resentment out of his tone.

Elle briefly closes her eyes. "I've got nothing tonight," she says. "Well, you know, I'm partner now, so I get to pick my hours a little more." She smiles a somewhat wan smile at him; he doesn't smile back.

They take a cab back home. They are very polite. Elle gives him some light updates on what she's last heard from Enid, as well as a couple of stories about what's going on at her office. He says almost nothing. They get ready for bed, mostly in silence.

He is half asleep when he feels her stroking his cock, and he is almost instantly hard. He hasn't had sex with her in months, and his body is reminding him forcibly of that. He sees her in shadow above him, and can't stop himself from letting out a groan as she mounts him. She is hot and wet and slick and grinding against him, and it is unbearably arousing, and it's not long at all before he's spent. The whole thing has happened without either of them saying a word. He rolls over away from her, where she will for sure not be able to see the tears pricking at his eyelids. He falls asleep that way, and when he wakes up she is gone, and he thinks that maybe it was a dream.

Except that it happens again, the next week, and then it starts happening on a regular basis. He is not sure he likes it. No, scratch that. He is very sure that the part of him that can't stop pulling her to him instead of pushing her away when she straddles him, that cries out hoarsely as she rides him to oblivion, likes it much too much, and equally sure that the rest of him is only feeling more bruised and wounded every night it goes on. Trying to understand what she is doing only makes his head and heart hurt. He supposes he should tell her to stop, or to explain herself, or at the very least ask her if she could say something to him, anything -- _I love you, I hate you, I want you now, I'm leaving you tomorrow_ \-- before she fucks him. But he is fairly sure that the minute he starts talking to Elle about something more than whose turn it is to empty the dishwasher that he's going to fall to pieces, and he's protective enough of what remains of his dignity to want to avoid that. He starts sleeping further and further away from the center of the bed to avoid her, until he is almost balanced at the edge. That works about as well as he expects it to, which is to say not at all.

So instead he starts spending more time at his office, and going home later and later, and waking up earlier and earlier, so that he's never in the house with her when she's awake, and pulling all-nighters so he isn't at home at all. He imagines that this is her way of detaching herself from Callahan -- she seems to be home quite a lot now, which means that she can't be with Callahan very much, anyway -- but if so, it is ironic that _this_ is what is breaking him.

**Callahan:**

The first time Elle kisses him first is right after they have the conversation about her being made partner. It is perilously close to the last time, too, but he doesn't know that yet. They fuck and it feels... different and rather stimulating, although somewhat awkward as well. 

The next day he doesn't see her. She's told him she has to have dinner with her husband for their anniversary that evening, and, magnanimous in victory, he acquiesces. He was, after all, able to snag the evening of their actual anniversary for himself. He was the one the Shabby Sheik's wife was fucking that night. 

The second time Elle kisses him first is the day after that. She seems a little distracted, and doesn't make the "omigod, omigod" sounds he's associated with their fucking, but he chalks this down to all the paperwork and bureaucracy involved in her status change to partner. (There is an insane amount.) Anyway, he then has to go play tennis with Kennedys for a weekend, which is his idea of slow torture, so he has other things on his mind.

The third time Elle kisses him first, the Monday after he gets back from the Kennedys, is a friendly, impersonal kiss, right before she tells him that she's breaking it off, that she isn't going to see him anymore like this.

And only then does he realize the trap he's placed himself in. He couldn't have not offered Elle partner; his whole seduction was predicated on having that carrot to offer her, and if he hadn't, someone else would have; she's making quite a name for herself. But now she's his equal, he's lost the superiority that made her desire him. 

"I rescind my offer to become partner," he snarls.

Elle smiles gently at him. "All right, but, you know, we've already turned in the paperwork, and it's going to scream 'sexual harassement' to the entire world, and do you really want to get yourself in the middle of that?"

He knows she's right. He knows, even, that he wants her as partner in the firm even if they aren't fucking. 

"And so you're going back to Corduroy Boy, then?" he spits.

She shrugs, like she doesn't care what he thinks, and he knows he's lost her. Not that he really wanted her in the first place. "Why would you care?"

"Bitch," he says, which doesn't make him feel as much better as he thinks it should.

**Elle:**

Elle doesn't know what she's doing. When they went out for their (belated) anniversary dinner, there was something about the way Emmett was silently daring her to say she wasn't coming home that somehow aroused her. She knows there is something wrong about this, but later that night, with him right next to her in the bed, she can't stand it any more and starts touching him, with predictable results. He seems amenable to it, though afterwards curls up away from her, in silence.

The next time she's at home with Emmett, the week afterwards, after she's broken it off with Callahan, it happens again. And again and again, for several months. It's as if her waning attraction to Callahan has attached itself back to Emmett. She has to admit it's something of a relief -- she has never liked the magnetism which drew her to Callahan, in defiance of both her morals and her common sense -- but while Emmett never refuses her attentions when he's in the bed with her, he starts coming home later and later, so that she's deeply asleep by the time he comes in.

It's a little after she stops seeing Emmett at home almost entirely when she realizes that her period is a full two weeks late. It's only then that she remembers that she stopped taking the pill when she started fucking Callahan, as she always made him wear a condom. (She'd lay odds that Callahan has some sort of disease that she knows he's not going to tell her about.) And she forgot about that when screwing Emmett. Oh... crap. Oh, damn, damn, damn.

Elle sees the two lines on the stick Friday morning, which gives her all day to mull about it in the back of her mind while she takes depositions and files reports. It's late that night when she's finishes work, partially, she knows, because she's been trying to delay the moment when she has to take it out from the back of her head and examine it. She sighs, locks up, and walks to Emmett's office, half a mile away. His light is on.

She lets herself in; she still has the extra key he gave her, back before the disaster part of their marriage. Emmett looks more tired than Elle has ever seen him, even when she first met him and he was getting about four hours of sleep a night. He is hunched over his desk, looking totally worn out, and she wonders if, in fact, he is sleeping at all.

He straightens his spine as she walks in the door, and raises his eyebrows. "Elle," he says flatly. "What brings you here at this hour?"

There's no way she can say this, except in the most blunt way possible. "Emmett, I'm pregnant."

A panoply of emotions crosses his face. Shock, almost a bit of awe, hardening into a despair that would break her heart if her heart weren't already shrunken into a cold hard lump. He folds his hands. "Whose is it," he says, almost not a question, his voice so dead that it's like he doesn't care what the answer is. He probably does think he knows what the answer is. She winces, even though she knew the question was coming, knows that it is mild compared to what she deserves.

"Yours," she says. "I'm sure."

He nods. Pauses. She knows he is thinking, as is she, of those silent hot evenings. "Was it... intentional," he asks, still in that dead voice.

She frowns. "No. Just criminally stupid." She considers. "Well. Possibly subconsciously intentional; I'm not usually quite that stupid."

She is surprised, that he does not make the obvious retort to that. Instead he sighs, slumps into his chair, rubs his temples with his fingers. When he speaks again, his voice sounds utterly exhausted, but at least it's missing that dead tone. "Are you going to abort?"

She answers, "If... it hadn't been yours, I would have aborted, and not told you at all. But things being what they are, I figured you had the right to know, in any case."

"Thank you," he says softly. And then: "It's your body, of course, but I would like you to consider aborting it."

She raises her eyebrows. "That... wasn't what I had expected you to say, Emmett."

His lips quirk bitterly. "Nor I. But with all this --" he makes a vague hand motion that could indicate _Callahan_ , or _Our marriage going down in flames_ , or _I'm thinking of buying a bed for my office_ \-- "I don't think it's fair to bring a kid into it."

She says, slowly, "No, I feel the same way; in fact, that was what I was going to say to you. But -- if you can give me another chance -- if you'd be able to forgive me -- I would like to work it out. Us. I'd like to try. I love you, Emmett."

Emmett drops his head in his hands, and she sees him shaking, and then she realizes he's crying, ugly shuddering sobs racking his whole body; she's never seen him cry before, even when he broke his knee the first year they were married. She goes to stand awkwardly by his chair, rubbing his back, and saying again and again, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." She can feel how bony his shoulders are, and suddenly she flashes back to their anniversary dinner and how he ate almost none of it, and she wonders if he is keeping himself together at all.

At length Emmett calms. He sniffles, faintly ridiculously. Elle wants to hold him, but does not. He says, "Would you have come to talk to me had it not been for the -- " she sees him forcibly chew off the word _baby_ before he says it -- "the pregnancy?"

"I would have talked to you eventually," she says. "Not yet, I don't think. It forced my hand a little. But I would have come."

He sighs. "I don't know, Elle." He looks up at her, his eyes red. "I'm willing to try too. I know I've made mistakes as well. I suppose as a first step we should go to counseling. That's my understanding, anyway, of what people do in these sorts of situations."

Elle is surprised by the lack of yelling, recriminations, guilt. She wonders what has been going on in his head, these past months. She wonders if she even wants to know; probably not. She nods. "Okay. And, you should know, I'm not going to give up partner, but I think I can do that without, without it interfering. It's a large company; there are other partners at the company I can work with. I never have to even see -- him."

He says, "No. Well, I won't insist you quit this instant, but you have to promise to switch firms when you get another reasonable offer, and look for another firm as much as you can." She slowly nods. All right, that's not unreasonable. "And you've got to stop the -- the -- jumping on me. At night. You know."

She is taken aback; she'd expected anger, bitterness, but not this. "I thought you liked it."

He swallows convulsively, and has to clear his throat. "I do. I'm not saying I don't want to have sex with you. But... I can't deal with fucking instead of talking. It makes things worse."

"All right."

Emmett says raggedly, "One more thing. If this is going to work, you can't ever do... what you did... again. It almost killed me this time. I don't think I can live through it a second time." Looking at the new lines on his face and the way his clothes are hanging on his gaunt frame, she thinks that he might mean that literally.

She closes her eyes, opens them again. "Yeah. I double Delta-Nu-sister-swear it." She holds out her hand, and after a moment he holds out his, and they do the preposterous secret handshake she taught him back when they were just friends and everything between them was easy and nothing was complicated. They've still got that, she thinks, even if they've lost everything else. Even if they have thrown away everything else. And for the first time in a very long time she sees him smile at her. It's a weak, wavering smile, but a real smile nevertheless, and Elle allows herself to hope.


End file.
